Alcohol Use on College Campuses, Essay Example

Extensive alcohol consumption is one of the major problems for the American universities today. Despite the age limit of 21, measures from the universities’ administration and attempts taken by the police to reduce the alcohol consumption, drinking remains highly popular among the college students and often leads to serious consequences. One can not say that this issue is a new one, the first studies raising alert about the alcohol consumption on the campus date back to 1928. Past decades have been marked with campaigns to raise awareness of the problem and reduce drinking as much as possible. A question might arise – is the problem really serious enough to pay so much attention to it. In order to demonstrate how serious the issue it, the following statistics can be presented: (Hingson, 2005)

1. 1,700 college students between the ages of 18 and 24 die each year from alcohol-related unintentional injuries, including motor vehicle crashes
2. 599,000 students between the ages of 18 and 24 are unintentionally injured under the influence of alcohol
3. More than 97,000 students between the ages of 18 and 24 are victims of alcohol-related sexual assault or date rape
4. 400,000 students between the ages of 18 and 24 had unprotected sex
5. More than 150,000 students develop an alcohol-related health problem
6. About 25 percent of college students report academic consequences of their drinking including missing class, falling behind, doing poorly on exams or papers

These statistics demonstrate that alcohol consuming on campus is a very urgent problem that leads to serious problems, like injuries, death, unexpected pregnancies, massive property, damage, etc. However, in order to thoroughly study the problem, we should indicate recent changes in the campus drinking patterns. It is very important to study the problem in dynamics – explore the changes that occurred in the number of students drinking on campus. An important term for this study is “binge drinking” – taking five consecutive drinks for males and four for females. It is much different from one single drink for relaxation, and is rather drinking to get drunk.

The first serious survey to study the problem was taken in 1993 by the Harvard School of Public Health College Alcohol Study surveyed students from 140 colleges in 39 states and District Columbia. This first study shocked the public in many ways and gained a lot of media attention. 44.5% of the respondents claimed to practice binge drinking at least twice in the past two weeks. This fact placed a lot of criticism on the people responsible for the alcohol issues on campus – deans and counselors. Massive campaigns followed, trying to educate young people about the potential threats of drinking and trying to persuade that alcohol consuming is no indicator of social status or maturity. In 1997 and 1999 two more similar surveys followed in order to estimate the changes made by the anti-alcohol campaigns inside the universities. Surprisingly and sadly, the data remained pretty much the same: in 1997 42.9% of the young adults practiced binge drinking and in 1999 – 44.1%. This demonstrates that despite the attempts taken, drinking on campus remained a major problem. Some changes in the drinkers’ structure however occurred – college students became more polarized, as more people restrained from any alcohol – 20%, while about 24% of the respondents confessed of frequent binge drinking. This has raised additional discussion, as non-drinking students had problems with “secondhand drinking” – conflicts with their drinking friends or neighbors. As a result more students have been involved in counseling concerning the alcohol matters.

In the 2000s, more researches have been held aimed to determine the results of various activities aimed to reduce the campus drinking. In 2001 the results have been even more saddening, as the number of students drinking remained mostly at the same level, and the number of alcohol – related injuries and deaths increased. This tendency has been especially vivid among the group of 18-21 year olds. Their number in colleges has increased by 3%, while the number of accidents with this age group (especially drunk driving cases) has risen about 10%. This fact triggered a set of educational and psychological trainings in most of universities, aimed at the newly-entering students. It is clear that binge drinking is much less popular in the high school, and most of the binge drinkers in college acquire this habit during the first college year. College deans, counselors and active non-drinking students arranged multiple non-drinking activities for the newly-entering people, attempting to demonstrate that consuming alcohol is no the best self-identification way. This has lead to further polarization, as the number of people previously classified as periodical (or light-drinkers) had decreased, as the number of students retaining from alcohol grew.

Overall, the 2006 survey finally indicated positive shifts regarding this problem. The number of active binge drinkers declined significantly, reaching the level of 40%. Similar results were present in the independent university studies, for example in the University of Florida, which has indicated a 10% decrease in the number of regular binge-drinkers.

College administrations hope that the recent positive results are the indicators of the trend that is developing now – more responsible and careful drinking. Many issues however remain unanswered. First of all, many polls produce the results that are relatively far from truth – binge drinking has been presented as a very negative issue, so the survey respondents might have lied answering the questions. Secondly, the policies preventing drinking on campus are still to be developed, as 77% of the universities still permit consuming alcohol on their territories, while 41% of colleges even have places to buy liquor. And finally, off-campus drinking is also a problem, which is not so carefully observed, but the causes and consequences of drinking outside campus are basically the same for the students. This problem still requires a lot of studying in order to find the most applicable solution to it.

Works Cited

Hingson, R. et al. Magnitude of Alcohol-Related Mortality and Morbidity Among U.S. College Students Ages 18-24: Changes from 1998 to 2001. Annual Review of Public Health, vol. 26, 259-79; 2005

Fortman, Adam. Inaccurate Polls About Drinking on College Campus – Health and Wellness website. Accessed March 15, 2009 at: http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/229410/inaccurate_polls_about_drinking_on_pg2.html?cat=5

Wechsler, Henry. College Binge Drinking in the 1990s – a Continuing Problem Journal of American College Health, 2000. Accessed March 15, 2009 at: http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/cas/Documents/cont_problem/rpt2000.pdf

Binge drinking down at UF, campus survey finds – University of Florida News. Accessed March 15, 2009 at: http://news.ufl.edu/2001/08/30/binge-drinking/

Binge Drinking on College Campuses – accessed March 15, 2009 at: http://www.addiction-treatment-centers.com/binge-drinking.php